Tag Archives: Watch the Skies

If you’ve never played a megagame -which, full disclosure, I never have- you need to take care of that lapse in living (full disclosure: I am), and this November 12 (from 12 to 7) you’ll have the chance to. On that day, Erie Megagmes hosts the Watch the Skies megagame at the Universal Unitarian Church on Perry Highway.

But, I hear you cry, what is a magegame?!?

Glad you asked.

[Watch the Skies] is a megagame about international relations, conflict and high level diplomacy.
It also involves mysterious and threatening aliens from outer space.

The basic premise is that unknown aliens are increasingly visiting earth to abduct, investigate, terrorise and ultimately to subvert and take over or perhaps render earth weak enough to invade.

The game is about how humanity as a collection of political entities decides to react to this.

Game play is in part about humanity gaining technological knowledge by shooting down alien craft and/or capturing aliens alive or dead and key items of their technology. That knowledge can be used to improve the economy (selling alien tech to corporations), develop improved countermeasures to the alien threat or to upgrade national defense.

There will be the different national contingents attempting to coordinate their responses whilst at the same time meeting national objectives. This will involve high level diplomacy. Earth remains a politically complicated place, and at the same time as responding to the obvious threat of aliens, human governments will have the full range of human on human political rivalries, conflicts and crisis – none of which can be safely ignored.

Humans get to upgrade their capabilities or economies by researching captured alien equipment and personnel and thereby gaining knowledge. These can be shared or held – depending on how much the human players cooperate. Humans also have to decide how to use their resources to build better bases, upgrade existing weapons and so on. And who knows – maybe bring the war to the enemy?

The Aliens will be getting up to the usual unspeakably devious and alien activities. Abductions, probes, infiltration, cattle mutilation and terror raids cannot be ruled out.

The game will be on quarterly turns so decision-making will be strategic – primarily about resource allocation, doctrine, policy making and, of course, diplomacy.

Join as an individual (you’ll be matched to a team) or as a team (representing a nation and its military, diplomatic and espionage strengths, or terrorize the other players as Aliens)!

Tickets can be purchased here, and YES! tickets are required to be purchased before the event. Because everyone is going to be sorted into jobs and countries -to say nothing of purchasing lunches- stragglers can’t be accommodated.

If you want to see the game in action, check out this video. Yes, it’s long, but the first 10 minutes should be sufficient to get you to register.

Buy your tickets now and be a part of Erie’s first megagame experience! I’ll be there!

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The GeekERIE's purpose in life is to encourage reading and writing through direct involvement in the Creative Process. We believe that "perfection" takes time and lots of work, but along the way, the work should be fun. We currently offer tutoring services, but more services are on their way. Oh, yeah: we're also a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

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